Jam Tomorrow

We are taking part in a bread revolution. Recently we spent three incredibly inspirational days in Melmerby, Cumbria with baker Andrew Whitley and six other people from all over the country interested in finding a way to bring real bread back into their community.
Some ideas revolved around a wood fired community hearth where anyone could bake, some thought of teaming up with schools, some considered volunteering, others needed to earn a living. The traditional model of a bakery shop is often not viable anymore and that is why we have had such excited responses to our model of Community Supported Baking. And it’s you, dear buyers and subscribers, who are leading the revolution!
Andrew Whitley set up the Village Bakery in the 70s during a similar wave of environmental and financial anxiety. He studied Russian in Moscow and consequently worked there for the BBC, a background which doesn’t instantly make you think of baking, but he describes himself as an idealist who felt compelled to take action. He brought rye bread to the masses by supplying supermarkets and health food shops all over Britain.The Village Bakery goes on, but Whitley has turned his energy to The Real Bread Campaign, a venture that aims to support the return of small bakeries and real bread to people’s immediate reach. We, as two people from the community, decided to start baking and see how people would receive it. We are interested to see what else will develop around bread in the Colne Valley, how people will get involved, where this takes us. Who will bring in their grandmother’s unbeatable recipe, whose glut of apples we will be baking with, what can we do with schools?
With everything else that’s going on with Transition Towns and Renaissance Market Towns, it looks like Marsden is onto a good one.